Panel 3.10 Roundtable discussion: Vincent Ostrom’s Contributions

Vincent Ostrom was an intellectual partner to Lin Ostrom, and she publicly acknowledged his profound role in the journey to her Nobel Prize. Vincent contributed foundational aspects of the Ostroms’ tradition through his scholarship and, famously, contestation at the many colloquiums of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Yet key elements of his work, eclectic and challenging, remain outside the range of reference of many commons scholars. Vincent’s epistemology arguably underlies the science of the commons as Lin structured it. Among his most substantive ideas are those of the coproduction of democracy, of the poverty of the term “state” as it is reified in the analytic literature, and the deep commitments- covenants and covenant-like understandings- that support civic artisanship, the foundational activity of self-governance. This roundtable provides an opportunity for scholars engaged in the Ostrom tradition to describe and discuss Vincent’s insights and their implications for continuing inquiry in our time.